After watching History Channel’s latest end of the world documentary, LIFE AFTER PEOPLE, my mind returned to an old thought, “How do we share our knowledge with the next generations?”
Paper, Compact Discs, and other digital technologies can’t survive the passage of time without us keeping a constant vigil over their well-being. Data degrades. Paper rots. Even if a hard drive managed to go the distance and remain intact 1,000 years from now, how the hell will it be read? We couldn’t figure out Egyptian hieroglyphics until we found the Rosetta Stone. I pity a future civilization that’s still under the thumb of Windows.
There’s no hope for them if they’re crunching data on future Macs.
Everything we know about our former selves has been written or fashioned from stone. The Romans left behind roads, buildings, and aqueducts. The Egyptians left writing, the pyramids, and sphinxes. Chichen itza is, arguably, the Mayans most famous relic. What are we going to leave behind? Because without constant maintenance, everything we currently use for archiving will “die” in 500 years time.
Our great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren won’t know a damn thing about the atrocities of our wars, the strange allures of Marilyn Munroe and, to infinite lesser degrees, Britney Spears or Anna Nicole. Things like Prime Time TV, the Internet, body modification, lying politicians, feats of engineering madness or that bear that fell out a tree and onto a trampoline. All of those things, even the mundane little crap, would be erased from human history. Face it people, these are the facts, even the stupid ones, that define our culture.
Sturdier technologies are what we need. Building things that last is something we should start doing again. If this post on Grinding.be is any indication, maybe we already have.
EXTRA THOUGHT
Jon Stewart interviewed Alan Weisman about his book The World without Us August 2007.
